nayad's Full Review: Mark Z. Danielewski and Zampano - House of Leaves
Think about actually trying to build a house of leaves. The leaves pile up only so high before shifting and scattering. You build and build, only to have your efforts blown away by each tiny gust of wind. Now imagine that what you are trying to create is only a tiny part of a much greater structure of unheard-of intricacy, and is required to support the rest. Frantically you pile leaves onto leaves, attempting to layer them in such a way that all your efforts won't collapse and disappear.
The above paragraph is intended to illustrate the kind of monumental effort undertaken by Mark Z. Danielewski in writing his House of Leaves. Does his effort succeed? Yes and no. I won't tell everything about the novel in this review, but I'll include enough details to give you an impression of what you're getting into if you decide to read it.
This novel defies description. There are two major elements to examine - the format, and the plot. This is a rare example of a novel in which the format and the plot are of equal importance, because one tangles through the other, tying together insane structures and characters. Usually the format of a book is so straightforward that it fades into the background. We take for granted the experience of reading the words from left to right, down the page, forward from the beginning to the end. Maybe it's best to start with the plot when trying to explain this enormous undertaking of a novel.
Plotline #1: Zampano's disjointed, unfinished scholarly examination of a certain documentary (The Navidson Record) about a House which changes its internal dimensions, but is always bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. This plotline can be broken down into two stories: that of the documentary itself and its creation by Navidson, upon moving his family into the House, and that of Zampano, an old, blind fellow whose fragmented, scattered notes are left behind after his death in a completely sealed apartment. The documentary covers the discovery of cold, black corridors that grow and shrink within the House, leading to miles of changing rooms and staircases, and the effect of this discovery on the family trying to start a new life in this House. Zampano himself is a barely glimpsed figure shown in the struggle, within his notes, to make sense of the documentary and its ramifications of the nature of space, perception, good, and evil.
Plotline #2: Johnny Truant, the young apprentice tattoo artist who finds Zampano's notes, and is profoundly changed as he reads and organizes them into book format. Johnny's story comes out in his footnotes to Zampano's work, and in old letters to Johnny from his mother (found in Appendix E of the novel). Johnny's footnotes often take the form of long, rambling journal entries that touch on the work at hand, then wander off into the darkening corridors of Johnny's own mind and life, as he becomes increasingly disturbed through his continued association with Zampano's manuscript.
The question of footnotes leads to the format of the novel. A person could almost get nightmares from the headaches involved in trying to read everything. First, the collection of writing by Zampano is incomplete, but within that collection there are footnotes written by Zampano (some complete, some not). Then there are Johnny's footnotes, explaining Zampano's work (as well as Johnny's own reactions to the work). Then there are footnotes by the fictional editors publishing the package ultimately put together by Johnny. These multitiered footnotes are presented in different fonts to make it easier to tell who's writing what, at least.
But wait! There's more!
Page layout. Large sections of the book are displayed in a fairly standard way, interrupted only by the footnotes. Lots of pages are displayed in incredibly NON-standard ways, with text going in all possible directions, and large amounts of white space (including some pages which only contain one word each, right-side-up or not). The ever-present footnotes are woven into the text, also in non-standard directions. To read everything, you have to turn the book around and around.
The disorienting effect of reading in this manner is both confusing and brilliant. The black corridors in the House invoke madness, and in reading the book's multidirectional effects the reader is brought into a greater understanding of the way that the characters are jerked around and put through emotional contortions that most people never have to experience. The shape of a person's home should never be called into question, and in the constantly changing House shown in The Navidson Record, the shape of the family's home is never constant. Johnny's reaction to compiling the manuscript is a reinforcement of that idea - he subsequently experiences doubt over his safety in his own apartment, and this adds to the reader's impression of the mysterious power of the House to frighten and disorient people even at several removes from the real experience of living there.
I do think this novel had some flaws. I think that the story could have been told, and the point made, in less pages. The pages of pseudo-intellectual analysis by Zampano get unwieldy, adding unnecessary bulk. But the overall effect was interesting and unusual enough to make this novel a worthwhile thing to read, even for someone who usually wouldn't be interested in a horror novel. The way the story is told is so ambitious that I think anyone who's looking for a challenging read would enjoy it. On the other hand, if you're looking for a quick read or a straightforward story, this is not the book for you.
The textbook, House of Leaves : A Novel, by Mark Z. Danielewski, available in Paperback. Published by: Random House, Inc.. Edition: . ISBN10: 037...More at Textbooks.com
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